In the photography field, in particular professional photography, photographers take photos with a camera and subsequently edit the resulting images on a computer with an image editing program. These edits are intended to enhance the images so that they become more visually appealing. How a particular photographer chooses to edit his photos will vary based on personal preference and style, and can include adjustments of attributes such as temperature, tint, and exposure of the photographic image. A myriad of attributes are adjustable by existing image editing programs in the current state of the art. For example, one photographer might utilize an image editing program to adjust his images to be more warm while another photographer might adjust his images to be more cool. In another example, some photographers prefer the blacks crushed in his photographs, meaning that the images appear more contrasting and sharp, while other photographers prefer soft blacks, meaning that the images appear more hazy.
With an image open and in view in an image editing program, the photographer would typically move a sliding scale tied to an attribute he wishes to alter and the program applies a corresponding change of that attribute to the image in real time. The photographer proceeds to adjust, in the same image, multiple attributes to varying degrees. Going through at least hundreds of images comprised in just one standard photoshoot to select and properly adjust them is a time-consuming and meticulous task, even for a seasoned photographer.
Some offerings are available in the status quo that may appear to assist photographers in the editing process. One is referred to as presets or filters, which are a canned set of adjustments that can be applied to an image. For instance, one preset is a “warm” preset that, with the click of a button, can adjust the appearance of an image to be more warm. Another preset is a “cool” preset that, when selected, will make an image appear more cool. However, these presets generally are directed to a set of fixed attributes, forcing users to select the best fit preset to be applied for the image. Presets are directed to a set of fixed attributes that are applied in the same exact manner to every image selected, causing a photographer to have to implement additional and different adjustments to each image after a preset is applied. Another offering in the field is post production houses that employ people who provide manual image editing services. However, these people do not provide quality edits that adhere to the photographer's editing style, as achieving all those precise edits that a particular photographer desires is extremely onerous.
In practice, a professional photographer's editing style is a unique signature that contains numerous intricate and subtle implementations of image attribute adjustments. This editing style is very difficult for the photographer to fully articulate and communicate to another, forcing the photographer to spend a large amount of time and effort himself on image editing. In view of the above, a more efficient yet precise approach to computer-based image editing is desirable.